Korean-Canadian director Yi speaks on her work, connection to her roots


Filmmaker and journalist Yi Sun-kyung grew up in a Canadian city where her family was one of only a half-dozen Korean households in town.

That small community was what shaped her view on Korea as a little girl. It was the world where she was pressured not to be a reporter, but a teacher or a nurse. For many years, she tried to stay away from it as much as possible.

“There was competition and gossip,” the filmmaker told The Korea Herald during an interview in Seoul, Monday. 

“In the big picture, it was a group of people who lost their place, identity and status. They were all lonely and lost in their own way. So they hung onto one another. It was a love-hate relationship.”

Yi arrived in Seoul last week as one of the international delegates for a culture and communication-themed forum hosted by Corea Image Communication Institute. The last time Yi was in Seoul was in 1995, when she was doing research on North Korea and interviewing former North Korean agent Kim Hyun-hui.

After many years of trying to “run away” from her roots, Yi said she is now back to square one.

“I did not foresee myself coming back to Korea with this kind of honor,” she said about being one of the delegates for the forum.

“It is a high honor for me. Now I am back to square one, going ‘Oh, where does Korea fit into my life?’ And I do want Korea to fit into my life.”

Yi was born in Seoul, and her family immigrated to Regina, Saskatchewan, in 1976, when she was nine years old. Her father, who used to work for the U.S. Army in Seoul, became a mechanic and later a janitor in the small Canadian city. He was embarrassed and ashamed of his job because it was a big step down from what he used to do back in Seoul.

“They bought into the whole North American dream,” she said. “The idea that if you make it there, you’ll survive somehow. They knew they had to work hard. But they didn’t have a clue to what extent and what it was going to do to their self-esteem and self-respect.

“I was 10 years old and watched them lose their spirit over time. And that is not an uncommon story of Korean immigrants at the time. That’s why so many of them later ran corner stores, because they could be their own boss.”

For the last 20 years, Yi has been making non-fiction films about “people who are trying to cope with life in a new place.” Her first and award-winning documentary, “Scenes From a Corner Store” (1996), captured the lives of Korean immigrant families running mom-and-pop stores in Canada.

“I learned it the hard way,” she said. “You cannot get away from your past. The further I went away, the closer I got to my roots.”

She has just finished making a film titled “ECHOES” for Canada’s media outlet TVO, about the one-child policy in China and the Chinese mothers who feel forced to give up their babies.

“Being an immigrant completely shaped who I am and what I do,” she said, “because I see the world through that prism and the theme in my work is about longing and belonging. The stories don’t necessarily have to be about immigrants from Korea. It could be about people from different places. But the story and the narratives are very similar: It’s about coping and trying. It’s about identity. It’s about trying to find ourselves in the world.”

Yi became the first Western journalist to gain physical access to North Korea for three weeks in 1994. North Korea was the first country she visited after she moved to Canada in 1976. Yi remembers being lectured by North Korean elites about the Juche ideology, as well as being asked to watch North Korean propaganda videos during her stay there. Her 1996 documentary, “Inside the Hermit Kingdom,” which was based on her experience during her 1994 visit, will be screened in Seoul next week at the Canadian Embassy.

Though Yi left Regina after finishing her communications degree, her parents, who died a few years ago, never moved away from the city in Saskatchewan and stayed there until their deaths.

“It is my biggest regret that my parents aren’t alive,” Yi said, “because this is what they dreamed of ― to watch their daughter succeed. (Being invited to Korea) would’ve been the biggest success for them.”

CICI’s Culture Communication Forum runs from Sept. 4-6 at a number of venues in Seoul. For more information about the event, call (02) 424-0907 or visit www.coreaimage.org.

By Claire Lee (dyc@heraldcorp.com)